Dr Hubertus Hoffmann in front of the 'Hubertus Haus' in Diethardt, where
Fritz Kraemer spent his childhood and his wife, mother and son were
hiding during the second World War.

In the still impressive "Hubertus Haus" Fritz Kraemer lived with his mother and brother as a child from 1914 until the 1930s, before he started his law studies at the University of Frankfurt and later emigrated to the U.S. in 1939.

It had been the hunting lodge of Consul Hagedorn of Essen and in 1921 after his death was extended into a smaller private school for 30 boys and girls, several of them with Jewish background. Fritz' mother helped Mrs. Hagedorn to establish the boarding school, which was closed by the Nazis in the early 1940s.

When, in 1939, Fritz's Swedish wife Britta came to visit her mother-in-law in Diethardt with the little son from safe Sweden just before the war started, they were trapped there from September 1939 until May 1945. The Gestapo interviewed Britta about her husband several times.

Fritz Kraemer joined the U.S. Army in 1944 and fought with the 84th Infantry Division within LtGen George S. Patton's Third Army. He personally allowed him to take leave and look for his family after the Americans had reached the Elbe river in Germany. In a jeep he stopped at the "Hubertus Haus" in Diethardt and found his mother, wife and son alive and well.

His mother Anna Johanna Kraemer, who had converted to Lutheranism like her husband, but was strictly Jewish under the Nuremberg Nazi laws was one of only approximately 12.000 - 15.000 German Jews to survive the Holocaust hiding in Germany although the local Ortsgruppen-Führer knew of her. Her divorced husband Dr. Georg Kraemer was deported from nearby Koblenz on July 27, 1942 to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and died in November.

Several family members from Diethardt worked in the school and admired Mrs. Hagedorn and Mrs. Kraemer, which could have been the reason for her survival. The local people of Diethardt protected her. The school was the main source of income and the village children were educated there as well. After the war she joined her son Fritz Kraemer and his family in Washington DC .

The majors of Diethardt and Nastätten welcomed the news about Fritz Kraemer and invited to visit the "Hubertus Haus" and the small city house and to discuss the past and the story of a man who was forced to leave his Vaterland, joined the U.S. Army with two PhDs and one monocle and became the iron mentor of Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig and an influential advisor in the Pentagon.

When once Kissinger was standing in front of the house, he told: "Dr. Kraemer, if I would have been raised in such a grand house, I would be as self-confident as you are!